Now that VMware owns a technology that is far away from its primary business, the Spring Java framework and a couple of application servers, one of its primary challenges is building awareness among its customers.
To do so, the company is offering complimentary and perpetual licenses (2 CPUs) of its Tomcat application server called tc Server to any customer buying other VMware products, including vSphere and View.
VMware is not offering the existing editions of tc Server but a new one that integrates with the Spring framework and supports Spring applications.
It’s pure speculation, but customers would rather prefer to have for free the third piece of the SpringSource acquisition: the Hyperic monitoring suite.
Interestingly enough, not only VMware is not offering any special deal for Hyperic, but it even removed Hyperic components from tc Server. While previous versions of the application server in fact included some of them to provide insight about the application performance, the new Spring Edition doesn’t.
This means that either VMware is confident in its capability to sell Hyperic tools without incentives or the monitoring suite is not robust enough for VMware standards.